Analysis of the supreme competences of students in music education

In this study, it was aimed to examine the metacognitive abilities of the students receiving music education. The research was carried out using the survey model, which is one of the descriptive research methods, which is a quantitative research design. The study group of the research was limited to 1000 students who received music education in different districts of Mersin at the end of the 2022-2023 academic year, depending on the Ministry of National Education. In order to achieve the purpose of the research, the "Personal Information Form" and the "Metacognitive Competency Inventory", whose validity and reliability in Turkish culture were tested by Aydın and Ubuz, were obtained. In order to determine the metacognitive skill level of the students, descriptive statistics were calculated on the basis of each sub-dimension. In order to determine whether the scores obtained from the sub-dimensions of the scale differ in terms of gender, age, school type, duration of musical education (years), daily instrument study time (hours), and instrument type, t-test, Kruskal Wallis H and ANOVA tests were used for independent samples. As a result of the analysis of the data obtained in the study, a significant difference was found in favor of females in terms of regulation of cognition and metacognitive ability. The results for the age variable showed the difference between students aged 6 to 10 and students aged 11 to 14. Cognitive abilities of primary school students are higher than secondary school students. There was no difference in terms of students' cognitive ability levels regarding the duration of their musical education. Knowledge of cognition was found in favor of students playing string and key instruments compared to students playing percussion instruments. In addition, a significant difference was found in favor of students who practiced instruments for 2 to 4 hours a day in terms of cognitive ability.